A live stream of the event, cohosted by NASA and Intuitive Machines, is set to begin about an hour before landing. If successful, the 15-foot-tall (4.6-meter-tall) Athena will join a lunar lander developed by another Texas-based company — Firefly Aerospace of Austin suburb Cedar Park — on the surface of the moon.

A lunar lander built by Intuitive Machines is scheduled to descend to the moon’s surface today, potentially marking the second landing by a private company on the moon in the last week, roughly a year after the aerospace firm completed the first lunar landing by an American spacecraft in decades.

The destination is Mons Mouton, one of NASA 's potential landing locations for its Artemis astronauts. Intuitive Machines ' Athena moon lander began circling the moon on March 3, just one day after a competitor, Firefly Aerospace, landed on the lunar surface without a hitch.